Gillian Reynolds on radio tributes to Baroness Thatcher and her own
encounters with the Iron Lady.

Windy and cold in the north, warmer in the south. After 24 hours of programmes about the life and achievements of our first female Prime Minister I have come to the conclusion that anything said about Margaret Hilda Thatcher, 1925–2013, shows the same divisions in the country as the weather forecast. Your view of both will vary according to where you’re from.

I was listening to Radio 3 when I first heard of Baroness Thatcher’s death on Monday. It was just before 1.00pm. The bulletin that followed was, as is the way on Radio 3, short and clear. But this was a historic moment, one where the whole nation pauses to reflect so I retuned to Radio 4 and The World at One. It felt like a visit to the undertaker’s parlour. The presentational tone was reverently unctuous, as if the script were written by manuscript nib. The most vivid contributor was Lord Bell, close Thatcher adviser to the end, who spoke of her warmly, saying we would not see her like again. He sounded close to tears.

It was understandable. It isn’t easy to separate personal feeling on such an occasion. Yet it can be even harder for a listener. The emotional churn that comes when what you are hearing does not correspond with your own view is apt to find voice. It once did over gardens walls, it still does on radio phone-ins. It fires up Twitter and Facebook, explodes in kitchens and cars. “No,” we shout, “it wasn’t like that.” Then we sit and wonder whether, really, it was.

Radio, as the hours went on, certainly offered substantial food for thought. Whoever had planned the formal programmes to mark Baroness Thatcher’s death had done an impressive job. Peter Riddell, once political correspondent for The Times, now Director of the Institute for Government, presented Monday night’s Potency and Paradox (produced by Simon Coates), an hour of views from inside the corridors of power. Evidently, as some of the speakers are also now dead, the interviews had been collected over quite a long time but the range was impressive, including former members of Thatcher cabinets, advisers, civil servants, people who had been part of her closest circle.

Riddell’s thesis, diligently explored, is that there was always a paradox of head and heart within her politics. It showed in her personal kindness and compassion, it defined her political convictions. Early on, she could be persuaded, as Lord Carrington revealed. Yet the more dominant she became, the more isolated she was.

Andrew Neil’s special Radio 4 programme yesterday morning (produced by Paula McGinley) was built from voices of ordinary people, some who had known her in her earliest political career, some who only knew her public persona. Neil added in his own fond personal memories, of her friendship and guidance, his admiration for her courage, his regrets.

This was an unusual programme, a tapestry of everyday opinions, memories, insights. An innocence came out in the story of how she was desperate for nylons to go to her first Buckingham Palace garden party and, back in austerity 1951, the only way to get them was on the black market so that’s where her constituency worker got them. Not that young Margaret Roberts would have countenanced such a thing. Determined, brave, convinced, kindly but, as even Neil said, dangerously deaf to dissent.

Today yesterday, having only room for a bit of sports news alongside so many memories of Baroness Thatcher, ended with a brilliantly chosen trio of columnists, Sir Simon Jenkins former editor of The Times, Sir Max Hastings former Daily Telegraph editor and Eleanor Goodman, Channel 4’s former political editor. I think Hastings’s final thought should be framed and put on every newsroom wall. “Prime Ministers can only do what they do at the time.” In other words, yesterday never comes back.

I interviewed Mrs Thatcher twice. First in a constituency office in Warrington in 1975 when she had just been elected party leader. The second time was in Downing Street in 1986, when Michael Heseltine had just left the Cabinet and dangerous rumours were flying. She was everything these programmes said: kindly, careful and dauntingly convinced she was right about everything.